october 2012 - TOJET the Turkish online journal of educational ...

TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – October 2012, volume 11 Issue 4
blended e- learning. Lately, recent social software innovations have changed people's interactions with each
other, and provide new opportunities for publishing personal data, and exploring new interesting issues.
Moreover, students' expectations have been affected by these changes and accelerated the educational field. Elearning
and blended learning have witnessed some changes which affects its future approaches, as it refers to
the availability of new authenticity in using new technology in blending current teaching methods. The Blended
learning enables to choose between an immense group of substitute resources on your personal computer which
are available on international and regional digital stores which are accessed by creating personal accounts in
order to provide a kind of personalization on blended learning on the internet. E-learning also, facilitates
instructors' supervision which encourages mutual innovation. Additionally, it allows individuals to download
educational content on laptops, e-books, and taking notes in the class. You can use text messages to access new
innovations, and subscribe in e-games or multimedia and studying real methods of solving problems. (Littlejohn,
A and Pegler, c, 2007).
One of the key advantages of blended learning is the flexibility it offers to learners. Particularly with regards to
Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University (HBMeU) model, the implemented blended learning approach addresses
the 21st century learners’ need for flexibility while minimizing the feeling of isolation experienced by learners’
in full distance education. This feature is of high importance and relevance in a region where e-learning is still in
its infancy and awareness to its viability and strengths is catching up. (Tamim, R .M. & Parahoo, S . K ,2011)
Blended E- learning gives us the ability to change the time and place of the practice, but it changes the nature of
sources and tools which support learning and its means. Blended E-learning adds new dimensions which insure
the relation between different places, giving the student the opportunity to learn in the school or the university, at
work or at home environments. It provides flexible timetables for the learner and helps the learner keep the
balance between his commitments in work and at home. It also, expands multimedia sources which could be
used in the learning process. (Littlejohn, A & Pegler, C. 2007). In Addition, Blended E-learning adds new
dimensions for the process of learning by Blending between place, time, and multimedia provides new
capabilities ranging from different types of activities that could be accomplished by students, and the means that
enable the student to cooperate using available e-tools.
Consolidating material and electronic space means that different communities could interact in different ways,
which were hard to be imagined in the past, because it provides opportunities for synchronized (in the same
time) unsynchronized interactions (in different time). Thus, new learning types and different types of dialogues
take place. Besides, informational tools and sources enable students to constitute personal learning sources, in
which they blend their innovations with scientific materials which were collected from different libraries around
the world. This may arouse different questions about some traditional educational values, such as; who owns or
controls knowledge? Because the modern learning activities challenge the customary means of learning and
formulates new roles and literatures for teaching and learning process, moreover, it enables the learner to take
control of the learning process instead of the instructor.
Despite of the flexibility of e-learning and blended learning, still there are various obstacles, they are:
- Defining the motivating power of change and making use of it.
- The necessity of finding continuous methods for learning because of the high cost of the educational
process despite of its availability.
- Complex methods of the new teaching methods which affects the efforts being exerted on preparing for
blended e- learning.
- The new interactive means and the free exchange of information need a strong concern about ethical
issues.
All these issues have different effects on the users of this educational institution, because the principles of senior
management and policy makers should provide new opportunities and logical justifications which support their
adoption of blended e-learning, furthermore; the managers of e-learning should think of the needed levels of
promotion and its economical effects. Sustenance team should provide advices for staff and students in
universities, colleges, work environments or the individuals working in these fields. Staff members should think
of new contexts for learning beside the other factors which affect blending and the interaction of all these
elements. Everybody should take care of the ethical side of the new forms of interaction and the freedom of
information exchange. (Littlejohn, A and Pegler, C. 2002). Therefore, different researchers have dealt with the
efficacy of using blended e-learning in various researches such as; (Yilmaz, M.B and Orhan, 2010), (Siew-Eng,I
et al. 2010), (Korkmaz,o and Karakus, u. 2009), (Hyde, R. and Jefferies, A. 2010), (Collopy, R. & Arnold, J.
2009); which assures the efficacy of blended e-learning in developing students' positive response toward
curriculums as it contributes in developing students' thinking methods. also (Korkmaz,o & Karakus, u. 2009)
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